Friday, March 22, 2013

The Rogue Rat of Fukushima!

A rat so large due to the effects of radiation exposure that it singlehandedly took down the cooling system in the crippled nuclear complex exposing 8,800 nuclear fuel rods!

The reality is that a crisis caused by a giant mutated rat has not yet occurred, although the scenario of mutated animals is certainly on the table for some time in the future.

No, in this case a potential nuclear crisis could have been caused by a basic rat simply getting into a control panel and eating through wires.

Is it a serious failing of security, do you suppose, that an animal loose in the reactor could have caused a situation that could potentially have led to renewed fear of a meltdown?

I suppose that it is but you wouldn't know by the lack of any news generated regarding the animal event.

Simply speaking, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima that was caused by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami is no longer the story du jour for 'journalists' after having been replaced by 'news' items like Kim Kardashian's pregnancy and a series of other critical stories similar to that.

That, however, does not mean that the all clear has been sounded or that the nuclear crisis in Japan is no longer creating havoc for that country or for the rest of the world ('Fukushima Update!', October 31, 2012).

It simply means that the limited attention span of people has reached its course. That said, here is the story about the 'Rogue Rat of Fukushima!'

"...The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Wednesday that it had found what it believed was the cause of an extended blackout that disabled vital cooling systems this week: the charred body of a rat.

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that when its engineers looked inside a faulty switchboard, they found burn marks and the rodent’s scorched body. The company said it appeared that the rat had somehow short-circuited the switchboard, possibly by gnawing on cables.

The company, known as Tepco, has blamed problems with the switchboard for the power failure that began Monday, cutting off the flow of cooling water to four pools used to store more than 8,800 nuclear fuel rods. It took Tepco almost a day to restore cooling to the first of the affected pools, with cooling of the final pool resuming early Wednesday..." Read the rest of the article at The New York Times here.